Welcome to TSA Watch

A Citizen Watchdog Group That Will Force the TSA to Clean Up Their Act

Too many of our family, friends, and fellow travelers have been violated by agents of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). While some may argue the need for federal security at airports, one thing is clear–it is not the American way to sacrifice fundamental liberty for temporary security.

Whenever there are those who use security as an excuse to violate our property, our privacy, or our dignity, there need to be champions brave enough to stand up and draw a line.

We have created TSA Watch, a new national membership organization to advocate for the right to travel without harassment and to be free of unwarranted search and seizure.

There truly is safety in numbers. Like “Neighborhood Watch” groups around the country, the key will be to recruit enough members to make our presence known. And to do that, we need to get the message out widely—including letting people know that the TSA can’t put you on a “no-fly” list for joining us. Those lists are handled by the FBI, not the TSA.

There IS Safety in Numbers — Stand With Us As We Stand For Your Rights

With a broad-based membership, both seen and unseen, our very presence can act to deter abuses by agents of the TSA. And where that is not enough, we will document violations and bring the worst offenders to the attention of the TSA and the public.

TSA Watch will work to educate and organize members to document and even video record the TSA in action. We will help them to prepare and submit complaints about inappropriate TSA agent behavior, and to demand compliance with the Fourth Amendment. And where possible, we will help them to prosecute for theft and molestation, and for other violations of travelers’ rights, dignity, and property.

As an organization, we will develop and use web and phone app tools to collect complaint reports, map hot spots (sources of repeated complaints), and hold the TSA and their agents accountable for their actions. We will utilize professional tool-sets to document TSA misbehavior including sworn witness testimony, audio and visual recording, and new technologies for tracking items missing from passenger luggage.

TSA Watch Will Develop a Phone App to Help Travelers Document their Experiences With the TSA

Our members will receive articles and videos on how to deal with the TSA, TSA Watch tags and locks for their luggage, and members’ services, including member discussion areas, help filing complaints, and more. A phone app will be developed to help members through the TSA security zones, document the process, and make filing complaints easy—and more effective. We will also provide and/or sell products useful for holding the TSA accountable and for promoting TSA Watch, including chips to track items, in-luggage cable locks to prevent theft during searches, and protocols for properly documenting claims. Other services may include a variety of seminars, litigation classes, legal insurance, legal counsel and other assistance.

To this end, we are seeking $35,000 to create a stalwart legal and multimedia infrastructure while we prepare for our true public launch, a national multimedia membership and funding campaign.

TSA Watch Believes Women Should Not Have to Submit to Having Their Breasts Touched by Strangers as a Condition of Travel

We are working on our goals as we receive funding. We sure could use your help—even if you think it’s not much.

TSA Watch started with an idea near the new year – one more friend shared a story of being bullied by a TSA Agent, and having her Grandmother’s ring stolen. We stood up, and started working, announcing the group to friends in December, and sharing it with some activists and experts for guidance beginning in January.

We invite you to join us today. Watch our videos, read our information, join our message forums here on the website, and start talking with us. This is a grass roots, citizen, non-profit effort, led by skilled organizers with over 100 years of experience between them–and we want to grow this team exponentially, until we are strong enough to remind the TSA that they are our servants, not our masters.

TSA Watch welcomes people of every walk of life, race, gender, class, origin, and political stripe, because our Liberty, Dignity, and Property are ours to defend together, or lose apart.

Contribute your time, money, services, or more. Or, just join our discussion areas here on the site, to share your own TSA stories, ideas, and encouragement.

1. 40 Seconds – What Has the TSA Stolen From You? Stand With TSA Watch Today.

2. 5 Minutes – Introducing TSA Watch – An Overview of Our Goals

Update 1: As of April 15th we have raised 15% of our initial goals. We’ve used that money to develop TSA Watch infrastructure.

As of April 15th, we have formed a Board of Directors, passed bylaws, are incorporated, have published two videos and scripted others, and have developed some basic infrastructure on this website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Update 2: By the end of April we filed an application with the IRS for non-profit 501(c)3 charitable status. In June we found out TSA Watch was approved by the IRS.

TSA Watch is a now a 501(c)3 charitable non-profit organization. Monetary donations to us are generally tax deductible from individual income before calculating taxes in the United States (as long as all donations from an individual amount to less than half their gross income in a calendar year).

Update 3: In July we worked hard on infrastructure. We upgraded this website, adding membership registrations, message forums and a new professional theme. Tools to prevent robot-hackers and false registrations were added. We added social media sharing links for the top sites.

We also started networking to develop our Internship Program. If you know students looking for interesting internships in public speaking, social media, political action, web development, or video and multi-media production, & other areas where we need help, please steer them to our Volunteer – Internship pages. We will work with their professors so they may receive college credit for their volunteer work with our non-profit.

Update 4: In early August TSA Watch added Social Login tools so you can register as a member with, your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn accounts. Joining us has never been easier!

Our new radio interview campaign is beginning the week of August 10th, and continuing indefinitely. If you know a show that TSA Watch should be discussed upon, please check out our Media pages.

We have so much more to do to win back our rights, but together we can do it.

In the meantime, each passing day sees more stories of TSA Agents harassing, molesting, assaulting and otherwise abusing the traveling public.

For one thing, I have discussed our goals with Renee, Wendy, and Jeff from Freedom to Travel USA, and they have expressed support of our effort, as we are supportive of theirs.

They are doing an excellent job working on the clear language and legal filings in support of our 4th Amendment Rights and resisting the TSA’s breach of them. Their focus on the intellectual and legal side of this issue.

We are going to focus in a way the larger public can relate to, so we build an organization that can develop the power of numbers. After a while we are going to be known by most air travelers—and the data we collect will be available in support of the legal and political campaigns that must be won for our freedom from these 4th Amendment violations.

There is a real need for both approaches.

Our work will, we believe, help FTTUSA’s efforts in the long run—and their work helps ours from the get go.

We are focusing on building a VERY LARGE membership organization, initially with tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens. These members will use web and cell phone tools to actively document the TSA when they travel. This organization will be marketed in a different way, appealing to the general public in a way the traveling public might better relate to. We will be using mass media and image advertising to recruit members in a manner no organization working on this effort has accomplished.

For now though, we are simply building the non-profit and multimedia infrastructure to prepare for our more public launch.